Deane’s posterous

Southern US: Dogwood Alliance report says biofuels will double carbon emissions

Dogwood Alliance, released a position paper on the potential environmental and economic impacts of the cellulosic ethanol industry in the Southern United States, exposing the false environmental and economic benefits of tree-based biofuels. Over the last couple of years, policy makers and investors have been quick to jump on the biofuel bandwagon in hopes of cashing in on the climate and energy crisis, though little to no research supports the positive benefits of this fuel. In fact evidence seems to be mounting to the contrary.

Please value the writer & producer of these words by paying a visit to: http://www.dogwoodalliance.org/content/view/266/28/



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“Between the climate crisis and a growing dependence on foreign oil we are facing a grim future unless big ideas and bold policies are enacted. Unfortunately, tree-based biofuels are a short-sighted and false solution,” said Scot Quaranda, campaign director for Dogwood Alliance. “At best this is an economic boondoggle, and at worst, we are setting ourselves up for a disaster for our forests which will exacerbate global climate change rather than combat it.”



Key Findings from the position paper, include:

--Regions already known for their forest products are likely to dominate the market, increasing already unsustainable levels of clearcutting, conversion of natural forests to plantations, and use of toxic chemicals in forest management.

--Due to the vast amount of carbon released from Southern forest clearcuts, biofuel production could actually double the amount of greenhouse gas emissions.

--While it is clear we need to reduce fossil fuel consumption, research shows that we could reduce global warming pollution two to nine times more by conserving or restoring forests and grasslands than by razing them and turning them into biofuels plantations -- even if we continue to use fossil fuels as our main source of energy.

--Total government support for all biofuels in the United States reached approximately $ 6.3"$ 7.7 billion in 2006. Total support is projected to reach around $ 13 billion in 2008 and almost $ 16 billion by 2014. Money that could instead fund critical research into conservation and efficiency and proven solutions.



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Indiana: A Conservationist's Manifesto by Scott Russell Sanders

What could a Scott Russell Sanders book say that so many before it—Aldo’s Almanac, John Hay’s In Defense of Nature, any number of modern eco-shrieks—have not already said? Would there, could there be anything new here? Sanders begins with a compelling story: the spirited local defense of a threatened woodland in his town. This way, as in all his books, he draws the reader right in there with him. The fact that the story is ultimately a downer just reinforces his premise, which does not vary throughout the book: “Ultimately, there will be no security for life on Earth unless we see the whole planet as an ark,” one on which “we are common passengers.”

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In “Building Arks,” he gives as good an accounting of the current predicament and the resistance to it. Here, and all the way through, he delivers the precise and elegant writing I expected: “As I walk, spider webs catch on my forehead like stray thoughts.”  Scott Sanders is simply a virtuoso among essayists. As for the part about being a good read, you’ll be no more disappointed than I was.


The book is organized into three parts: “Caring for Earth,” “Caring for Home Ground,” and “Caring for Generations to Come,” each containing five essays. These range from heartfelt lamentations of loss to spirited cheers for good work being done in a multiplicity of small and quiet places, as well as for large gestures and big-acre projects. One of the most intriguing chapters, “A Few Earthy Words,” deals with the history, etymology, and creative application of a number of common terms pertaining to conservation. While his litanies of loss, indictments of evils, and prescriptions for humble and large change all scan, the most compelling sections for me are the personal bits drawn from Sanders’s own life.



Much of the action takes place in and around his long-ago adopted hometown of Bloomington, Indiana, reprising and fleshing out stories introduced in his much-loved book, Staying Put. The most valuable chapter for most of us may be “Stillness,” in which he confronts and wrestles down the frenetic demons of modern life, guilt born of impossible duty, and shrill offenses to personal peace, during one late summer afternoon in his just-completed writing hut. After all the necessary but bitter pills he delivers, Scott’s final meditation, “For the Children,” feels just like what he wishes for them: that “the breeze will be sweet in your lungs and the rain will be innocent.” On the whole, this is a beautiful, right-minded, and reinforcing book for all who would be conservationists.

Please value the writer & producer of these words by paying a visit to: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/review/4699/

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Africa: Only 2% of tropical forests not yet stolen from traditional peoples

Less than 2 percent of Africa's tropical forests are under community control, hindering efforts to slow deforestation and alleviate rural poverty, reports a new assessment from the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) and the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a global coalition of non-governmental and community organizations.

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Deforestation rates in tropical Africa are among the highest on the planet while the region's people are among the world's poorest. Forest communities are highly dependent on natural resources for subsistence but without title to the lands they traditionally use, they face loss of forests to developers, including loggers and agroindustrial interests. The report urges land reform to give forest dwellers better control over their land. At less than 2 percent, the proportion of land owned by or designated for use by the African forest communities and indigenous groups is but a fraction of the nearly one-third of all forests in Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific controlled by such groups. "The slowness of reform is suppressing a whole range of opportunities to reduce poverty and improve livelihoods," said Emmanuel Ze Meka, ITTO's Executive Director. "Africa's forest communities already generate millions of jobs and dollars in domestic and regional trade, and in indigenous livelihoods, but current laws keep some of these activities illegal and also undermine opportunities to improve forest management."

The report says the legal recognition of community land will facilitate sustainable development activities under proposed systems to compensate tropical countries for reducing deforestation rates. The concept — known as REDD for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation — is a climate change mitigation mechanism currently under discussion for the global climate framework to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. Deforestation and degradation accounts for at least one-third of emissions in most sub-Saharan African countries but without secure title to land, forest people could miss out on the potential benefits of a the carbon finance scheme.

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Michigan: Going on a Safari on Fighter's Island on the Detroit River

Driving on its few roads is like going on safari, with pheasants scurrying into dense brush and black-crowned night herons flapping their graceful wings and landing on trees. A colony of thousands of ring-necked gulls protects its delicate, tiny eggs on one corner of the island. Marshes have been created out of what used to be rum runners' canals. Trees, tall grasses, reeds and native berry bushes now cover most of the island, planted on a mix of alkali and soil created from bird droppings and composted leaves. For roughly six decades until 1980, Fighting Island in the Detroit River was a white, desolate moonscape, 80% of it covered with 20 million cubic yards of highly acidic brine waste dumped there from a soda ash plant. Runoff from the island washed into the already polluted river, and pale dust drifted in the wind from the island onto tomato plants and cars in nearby towns.

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Snakes lurk beneath the bushes, a coyote family roams and two bald eagles are nesting at the island's edge. Throughout the region, people are re-creating habitats that were destroyed and re-introducing creatures who once lived there: from Karner blue butterflies near Monroe to southern flying squirrels at Point Pelee. Last month, U.S. and Canadian officials said they'd gathered four lake sturgeon eggs from a reef in the middle of the river, which scientists built last fall hoping to attract the once-abundant fish to spawn there. The recovery efforts don't work every time, or perfectly. But when they do, such efforts are proof that what humans destroy, they can rebuild.

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redo...

UK: Ancient woodland doesn't need any more new bad neighbors

Oregon: First Ancient Forest Defending Tree Village of Cascadia Summer 2009

Activists from all over the country will be coming to Oregon this summer to join us in this Cascadia Summer, our season of resistance. We have numbers, we are organized and we are bringing forest defense to a BLM project near you. Our immediate message to the BLM is stop the WOPR and cancel the Fall Creek Project. We must also make clear that these are symptoms of a greater problem and if mismanagement of public lands remains the status quo, we shall continue to agitate. We invite folks out to visit the sits, or just to come to Eugene and partake in a Cascadian forest defense movement that breathes once again.

Contact  ForestDefenseNow@gmail.com with questions or comments.

As of June 1, 2009 tree-sits have been deployed within the Fall Creek Project planning area in defiance of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) propositions to clearcut 400 acres in the area. This action is taken as an escalation of the Cascadia Summer campaign against the Western Oregon Plan Revisions (WOPR) and corruption within the highest levels of the BLM. Perhaps the BLM will listen to these events, as they did not listen to the more than 30,000 Oregonians who filed formal protest against the WOPR.

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These are public lands and we will not sit back and watch the continuing devastation caused by government incompetence and corporate manipulation. As far as the economy is considered, do not be deceived, you will find no jobs on a dead planet. The WOPR, a Bush-era plan, will increase BLM logging by 436% in a time when timber prices have bottomed out. 70% of these new cuts would be clearcuts and 100,000 acres of old growth would be cut. Approximately 40,000 rural Oregonians live within one half-mile of BLM land and the security of their homes, drinking water, and local economies is under assault by this illegal plan. Boom and bust timber economics have failed and it is time for affected communities and environmentalists to move forward together toward a timber industry that can meet our mutual needs indefinitely.


Do you remember the days of Fall Creek, Warner Creek, the first Cascadia Summers? Do you remember the lands that were saved by the direct efforts of concerned citizens? We remember, and it is within that greater tradition of non-violent forest defense that we now come to you proclaiming that a resurgence has begun. As of June 1, 2009 tree-sits have been deployed within the Fall Creek Project planning area in defiance of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) propositions to clearcut 400 acres in the area.  

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Colorado: Removing Beetle killed trees won't stop beetle Killed trees

"The idea of rushing into some sort of removal activity prior to this season’s bug flight doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me,” said Kelly Rogers, who is based in the state agency’s Grand Junction office. “It is just not a place that I would be rushing into to cut a bunch of trees down in a big hurry.” Rogers, who has 30 years of professional forestry experience in Wyoming and Colorado, made his views clear in a May 21 letter to city of Aspen forester Chris Forman.

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“In my opinion it is very likely that all the mature lodgepole pine in this area will be killed by mountain pine beetle, within the next three years, regardless of the management actions taken,” Rogers wrote. Much of the impetus to take action is coming from For the Forest, a recently formed nonprofit organization whose board members are wealthy part- and full-time Aspenites with close ties to the Aspen Institute. The group, led by former Aspen mayor John Bennett, is urging local elected officials to take action before the beetles take flight early this summer and infest and kill more lodgepole pine trees.



“We don’t have to be like Steamboat, we don’t have to be like Vail,” said Jerry Murdock, a Red Mountain homeowner who sits on the For the Forest board of directors, in a recent interview with the Aspen Daily News. “Those places didn’t do anything until it was too late, and I don’t think that we have to be that way. We have to try, because the devastation is horrific.” For the Forest hopes that after four or five years of spreading verbenone and cutting brood trees, the beetles might move on from the Smuggler area, leaving more lodgepole pines alive.



But Rogers thinks trying to stop the beetles by cutting down infested trees is futile. “Sanitation cutting (removing currently infested trees) to reduce the mountain pine beetle population may slow the infestation on the lower slopes of Smuggler Mt., especially if combined with a Verbenone treatment to disrupt mating behavior,” Rogers wrote. “As I have stated, in my opinion it is highly unlikely that the infestation will be stopped by these (or any other) actions.” Verbenone is a pheromone emitted by female beetles who have infested a green tree. It is a signal to other beetles that they should move on to another tree. The non-toxic substance is either sprinkled on the ground near trees or stapled to a tree in a pouch.



 “My experience with Verbenone is limited, but by most accounts it does not work well in epidemic situations,” Rogers wrote in his report. Local open space and forestry staffers agree with Rogers about the long-term futility of trying to stop the beetles, but they have still developed an “experiment” on Smuggler Mountain in response to requests from Aspen City Council and the Pitkin County commissioners.

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Australia: Environment review says it's ok to keep ruing the environment

An environmental impact statement (EIS) on redgum logging in southern New South Wales recommends the practice continue. Green groups are critical of the EIS, which will be assessed by Forests New South Wales - not the state planning department. Activists are in the Millewa Forest near Deniliquin this week seeking to stop harvesting in the Ramsar-listed wetlands. Forests New South Wales western manager Gary Rodda says the EIS was done to remove any uncertainty about forestry operations in the area.

"Clearly the EIS is out for public display so that people can make comments," he said. 'We'll wait to see what those comments [are when they] come in, but at this point in time yes, the EIS is recommending a continuation of harvesting."

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